If you work with a client long term or are part of their internal team chances are you will see a number of redesigns of a site.

Over the years I have come to question why we constantly redesign things every few years.  It’s usually a change in directional branding, a  facelift.  As if a website is just a fashion accessory that must be changed as the trend of the season passes by.

Problem is to often I see the same mistakes being made time and time again.   The same old issues reoccur, as the central cause; lack of audience conversation and engagement is ignored.

All the corporate knowledge of one design is often thrown away as the new design comes in.   Resources are wasted as we rebuild and redesign the same old wheel, just this time it will a green with a pink flavour.

Business Fashion Take

Now I can understand why sometimes you need to seriously redesign the visual elements of a site:

• It gives a clear break from the mistakes of the past
• A distinct rebranding or look allows for a change in attitude
• Modernisation of the look and feel to match the latest trends
• Allowing for a reworking of a site to make it more flexible to future changes
• Take advantage of the latest technology
• Allow for integration of secondary service like social media
• Take stock and inventory of the site and review it’s direction

However just consider the audience for a moment.

Audiences Fashion Take

A good deal of the time the audience and users of a site are not on the same page as the business:

• Major changes are a pain, you can’t find anything
• Confusion over changed branding
• Apprehension over use of new technology
• Fear of breaking elements of the site
• Loss of previously saved information

The Alternative – Transforming Design

What we need is an alternative to the endless and costly redesign process.

A redesign should be realigning the site back to the core values of the business and requirements of the audience.    In the old  days of web design this would mean a complete redesign.

We now have “easy to use” template based CMS, use of rapid design frameworks for responsive design with a solid but very flexible multiple platform interface.   This gives us a lot of freedom and the ability to make wide ranging minor changes as we go.

Sure you can still plan and design the concepts for a redesign in one go.

But the key here is to roll them out in stages or as a slow piecemeal redesign of elements of the site.  Any design needs to be adaptable, flexible and agile to the responses.

Combine these minor deisgn changes with A/B and preference testing and you can very easily determine which direction is the better in terms of usability.

This will result in a slow change of a site overtime, they can be fully qualified as soon as they occur.   You can expect that over a year a site will morph from one design to another.

A kind of gradual morphing, transformation.  A transforming design.

The Advantages

There are distinct advantages to using a transforming design process:

• The budget is spread over a greater time period,
• There is a easy acceptance from the users,
• Rapid and responsive to issues as they arise,
• Rebranding can be rolled in slowly and morphed to a new direct as required,
• Sliding integration of older marketing campaigns with new ones.

Something to consider using transforming design, instead of the usually slash and burn redesign.

There is no doubt content is important, no doubt it’s in fact more important than any design. It’s the primary thing that people come to a website for – the content.

So you would expect new sites to come out with perfect content.

Well we know it’s not the way, still we have websites with crap content.

All the other boxes are ticked, the design just works perfectly, there is a distinct visual experience when you arrive on the site. Even the information structure and labeling allows you to get to the right information.

It’s  just when you get to the information you desire the entire site falls apart like a house of cards.

What could possibility have gone wrong.

You even employed professional content writers early on in the process.  Still things are just not as expected a few weeks after the site launch.

In most cases we will just write off the experience as a bad project and move on, knowing that too well that we can’t control the project in reality.   After all it’s not our site.

Still we keep on doing this all the time, site after site.. more crap content onto the web.  One or two sites is fine, but if every firm is having the same issue, think of the volume of crap content we are outputting to the web.

Why is this happening?

History Lesson

Good question; to really find the solution we have to look back on the history of the web.

In the early days of the web the uploading of the content of sites was left to the designers and developers to manually format and be the gatekeepers of the content.    Over time in the late 1990′s we migrated to desktop content formatting solutions like Dreamweaver and expensive content management systems (CMS).

Yet still the content was controlled by the web professionals.

Slowly over the last ten years content management systems have got cheaper and easier to use. The control has slipped from the web professionals as the gatekeepers to the client.

To the point we are at today where the CMS we use can be used by someone with as little as an hours training. And hence the gatekeeper usually becomes a junior staff member.

This has become the issue.

Our tools have turned against us.

Fixing the Wrongs

We setup these sites, making them content perfect, but the editing and content management has become so easy that it can be done with no regard for the overall outcome.

What we are basically doing wrong as web professionals is we are not really ensuring that ogranisations:

• Have a content strategy
• Understand of the strategy and what it means
• Understand at least the basics for writing for the web
• Understand or have been a close part of the design process

Lets face the reality clients are going to change that perfect wordsmithed content, but at least if we as web professionals, ensure they understand the basics of what they are doing then the web has a chance.

We need to teach people the right way to produced good web content.  There is then a chance the resultant content will at least be reasonable, not the mish mash we have today.

The thing is we need more than just to train our clients as content writers.

We need to provide them with an easy to use reference, from the printed word to an online video, showing the process.  You can bet  they are going to forget how to do it between  sessions producing or altering content, so these handy guides will be invaluable.

The Smoking Gun

So at the end of the day we are responsible in part for killing the web content, just because we have provided people with tools allowing them easy alternation of the content with no real training.

The issue is how do we fix this, will this type of training work?

Often in our goals to make things simple and easy to use we will remove all the clutter.  However sometimes we also remove all the little things that can make a design shine. That special attention to details that tells you the designer cares about the product or service in question.

Well on Christmas eve  2010 I was reminded of this in two surprising ways.  Both of these reminders came in the form of parcels.

Box One

The first was from Five Simple Steps and was Andy Clarke’s new HardBoiled Web Design Book, amazing book by the way. But it’s not the book that took my eye (at first) it was the packaging for the book. Instead of just using a normal cardboard box or padded bag there was something a little different.

Mark Boulton and crew at Five Simple Steps used a box with a simple wrapper. Not just any wrapper, one in the same design theme as the book. This made the delivery of this book special, unique, an event.

It’s amazing how just this little attention to detail, made me really look forward to seeing what was inside. In a way just this simple addition of a printed piece of paper enhanced the experience.

Box Two

The other package was a simple express postpack. However in this case it was the contents that were important.

It was an order of a dog collar from my friend Lisa’s wonderful online dog accessories shop – Puppy Tales.

Yes the package contained the invoice, and the ordered dog collar. But it also contained a good deal more. There was a series of little items that showed a good deal of care, if not love.

The collar was wrapped in a plain brown paper tied with a light green cord, with a very cute little note personally thanking us.

Then there was a Puppy Tales postcard as well, all branded and in Puppy Tales green. Finally the finishing touch for me was the paper clip in the form of a dogs bone. This package was pure magic to unwrap. You know it really did put a broad smile on my face.

Show me the Money

This level of attention to detail, especially during a busy peroid like Christmas, is to be appluaded and celebrated.

There is a lot we can learn from these two examples. In that it’s the little things, that only take a few seconds to do, that can have a lasting impression on people and promote that positive experience.

We can carry  this idea into all aspects of our business; from answering the phone to development and designing online services. All it takes is those few minutes longer to finish something off and make it something to remember.

It’s true the detail is where the experience is, don’t forget that.

Some of you may not have heard of design or project walls, they have been around for a while in various disguises like design cubicles,  design studios, information radiators, UX walls and the like.

This is where you can spread your UX artefacts,  your documentation of the project and the principles of the design out onto a wall for all to see.    You can put on the wall your key points from user research, map user stories, card sorts, inspirational competitors designs, task stories,  task flows and maps, afffinity diagrams, persona, storyboards, sketches, wireframes, feature lists,  burndown chart and so on; you get the idea.

It’s all on the wall physically in front of you, it’s really easy to see the big picture at a glance.

This technique presents a very transparent view of the project which can be review by the team, the client’s executive or anyone walking past with easy.   In fact it’s ideal for the client to comment and annotate a design wall.

Yes these walls can take up a lot of space, which is an issue I always have.   However you can use temporary foam-core walls, or put up wrapping paper sheets on the wall.  I recommend wrapping paper over butchers paper as it has higher weight and it’s tougher, and easier to get on large wholesale rolls.  You can also take down the wall, and roll it up and set them up at the client’s site.

Going Remote

Now this is great if the client is in the same city as you are.  But what happens when they aren’t.   We have remote research, remote prototypes, distributed teams, so can we do a remote design wall, a virtual design wall so to speak.

No I don’t have solution for this, yet.   So maybe you can help me:

Is there way to do a remote design wall?

Ideally we want something that is:

• Easy to use, almost a drag and drop method of construction for putting items on the wall.
• The ability to zoom in and out of the wall to see all the features on it.
• Lots of space, so you can scroll the page vertically or horizontal
• The ability to annotate, comment,  and scribble on the wall.
• Time stamping items as they are added, so you have an audit trail.
• Secure, password protect.

Now you can get online mood boards, and client sign-off facilitators, but what we really want it something where you can see the wall in it’s entirity on your screen and can zoom in on a specific  examine aspect of it.   What we need is an online prezi presentation application as a design page.

So what do you think, is it possible, or is there something already in place? Is there a virtual design wall online service?

Lately  there has been a resurgence in the discussion over using design for the greater good. From using design principles at the boardroom table, to solving third world problems with better interaction design.  Who are we really kidding!

While the concepts are very noble and I can see how it can be done. There really needs to be a dose of reality in all this.

The overriding principle is that we can change the world through design. We do this by influencing everything we design.  Such that we are producing high quality products that take into account sustainability, inclusivity and still focus on the business and audiences at hand.

Yes I know this isn’t impossible and is a great idea.

Still let’s just stop and think about this.   I don’t know about you, but I don’t think the scope of the clients I deal with day to day are really going to have any influence on a large scale.

Sure I work hard and consider all the angles that I can for my clients.   But realistically their budgets and scope of their business just doesn’t allow for much alurtistic design.

Now I would just love to follow these outstanding principles if the opportunity arises.

I  would also love to see a dose of realism thrown into this mix.   It’s all very well and good, for a group of luminaries working on top end projects to spout on about these principles.  Frankly I don’t believe the web sites, we are all designing and building on a daily basis, here at the other end of the specrum are going to make any real difference.

What do you think, can our design make a difference anymore?  Can we change the world one design at a time.

Some of you may not know this, I come from a formal science background, I trained as a scientist.  However, I don’t consider myself to be one, by any stretch of the imagination. I feel more at home in the design space.

Still all that background in the science arena has allowed me to apply it to the area of User Experience design. A guess it’s like a Science of UX Design.

To often we say that the area of User Experience is not so much a science but an art. Yes this is true. However it’s also a little wrong. UX Design is very much a science, or should be. As we are applying the basis of the scientific method to it.

To understand this you have to understand a little about backbone of science (science peeps you can go make a coffee now) and the scientific method.

Science and the Art of Observation

In science you are taught from day one to question. Yes question everything. This questioning helps you think creativity, build on previous ideas, observe, experiment and document. The key is to take nothing on face value. You are always asking , “nice, but show me the evidence..”.

Everything, you see, must come with evidence to support it. Any hypothesis has to have some evidence. And even then it’s going to have to be collaborated evidence so it can graduate to a theory.

You see a theory is the best you can get, its the ultimate statement.  Still you have to remember that a theory is not written in stone, it’s still open to change.  It should still be questioned, if the evidence stacks up against it.

A theory is just in a holding status, as the series of rules or an explanation of how something works as far as we know. The key here is the bit “as far as we know”.   At any time it can to shot down and a new theory can replace it.  Often the new theory is build upon the bones of the old theory, but not all the time, something a complete change of viewpoint is required.

Scientific Method

The important part in science in the use of the Scientific Method. The basis of the scientific method is a way to use the principles of scientific inquiry.  It’s the cycle of taking a hypotheses, testing it , analysing the results and then iterating,

The key to the scientific method is the use of the researchers intelligence, imagination, and creativity; its not like baking a cake,  there is no quick recipe to follow.  A bit like UX design in a way.

If we compare the two, the scientific method and UX design

UX Design verses Scientific Method

• Scientific Method:

  1. Define a question or problem,
  2. Gather information or observe,
  3. Form a hypothesis,
  4. Experiment and test,
  5. Analyse output,
  6. Interpret results (form new hypothesis),
  7. Document and publish,
  8. Peer review

• UX Design:

  1. Define a question or problem,
  2. Observe and research,
  3. Develop a design,
  4. User test and prototype,
  5. Analyse and interpret results,
  6. Document,
  7. Implement

As you can see they are very similar. All we are lacking is the formation of the initial hypothesis.

Science isn’t Creative?

Okay I can guess you are nodding your heads now as you see the comparison. However it’s not that simple is it?

Yes true design has all these principles and rules that can be applied. Same with UX design there are a number of for an interface design and psychological based principle that we can apply.   These rules are like the foundation theorems in science.

However design has that creative element. The innovative spark, the creation of something based on previous experience and the environment around us. Something that is gauged as being outstanding by our community. The process of that creativity and what it is can be always up for debate. However the key here is that design is a creative process not an analytical one.

And science isn’t!? …  Hang on let’s stop and think for a moment.

Okay design stimulates the senses and it’s this stimulation that we often use to measure creativity by.

However in science you still get that moment of innovation, the moment of thinking outside the square, the  moment of creativity, it’s just it’s not applied often to something that is traditionally thought of being creative. 

Looking at a physics equation a new way, or experimenting with a variations in compounds are the sexy creative elements but they can be creative in there approaches.

So yes science is creative.  Just not sexy creative, as is commonly known.

Science is Design

In UX design we prototype and experiment, observe the results, iterate and modify the prototypes using the test results and previous designs to find the new killer design. As you can see above, this is so close to the iterative experimental process of scientific method  it’s a little frightening. 

Mind you lets just stop for moment again.  If you think about it, it’s not surprising,  given that many of the principles of UX design are stolen from engineering which in turn stole them from basis of the scientific method.

So in reality UX design is a Science.  And maybe even Science is just Design.

Now tell me do you think UX design is more a science or do you still think its going with the gut and is an art form?

Creativity is a strange beast. Often creativity is blocking us, running away.  We often talk about it, discuss it at length and even say it can be learned.  Sometimes it’s even hard to find that creative spark.  However what is creativity.   In reality creativity is a hard thing to define as a  specific reproducible item.

Doesn’t help that creativity is different things to different people.

You see creativity can be related to the newer western principle of making products, building things for a purpose, the expression of scientific or technological innovation.  Where as in older cultures, there has always been an undertone for creativity being more for personal fulfilment, private goal setting, the taking of an inner journey.

Sure there are definitions of creativity all over the place. This still doesn’t help, as the biochemical, physiological and psychological process of creativity is still something of a mystery to which we only have fragments.

What is Creativity

What we do know is that the moment of creativity is often  accompanied with a heightened state of consciousness.

Things appear to be more vibrant, more alive, colours are vivid, sounds more pure,  it’s like a sensory overload.  Others have described this inspirational moment as a peroid of loss of control, a trance like, muse controlled, dreamlike state.

Interestingly Carl Jung (that psychologist guy) segmented these two states into:

• “a state of emotional high tension” and;
• “a state of dream-like contemplation”.

His idea is that creativity is the release of emotional tension. Especially the tension, built up over time,  coming from the hard work of the creative process.  Well I know we can all relate to that idea.

Later on Damasio (a neurologist) leveraged off Jung’s work in looking at emotions, creativity and consciousness.  Damasio theorised self-awareness  was a very important component of the creative process.  The ability for your mind to make it’s own patterns, designs without reference to previous experience or knowledge. This will be of a particular interest later.

Creative excitement of the artist at her easel or the scientist in the lab comes as close to the ideal of fulfilment that we all hope to, and so rarely do, achieve – Mihaly Csikszentmihalhyi

More recently research has indicated that the two different states of consciousness, correspond to two different brain states:

• Enhanced consciousness is associated with increased beta waves.
• Dreamlike state is associated with  alpha waves.

This supports the relevant  experiences of clarity and dream-states that have been reported. Nothing new really, just a documented physiological response.

It’s also been suggested that creativity is similar  to a spiritual experience, a type of receptive non-egoist cognition.  The type of experience where you just trust in a state higher than you to provide the final solution.  Something like a complete trust in a greater god-like power.

Personal and Group Creative Processes

Still creativity is not just about the creative individual either.

Yes, true, you do get the creative star. The person that is going to produce that single creative masterpiece.  However creativity can also be a group process, requiring the dynamic of the group to foster the creative process.

The inclination to work in one process or the other really just comes down to a personal choice, the processes, the environment, social dynamics and the expected outcomes.

You tend to find that  teams that don’t allow for any creativity, that focus on the total needs of the team at the costs above everything else with not have strong creative outcomes.  This can mainly be seen as a stifling of the creative spark.   The removal of the lack of self may be a very large contributing factor here.

Still you can have creative people in the team, and yes they will create, if you let them. Even though they have become faceless in the team itself. It’s matter of fostering the belief in self.

It’s their individual presence and creative ability in the team that produces the creative outcome.  It’s their being able to express their sense of self that seems to promote the creative process.

Something to think about in UX teams.  Even in a team it’s still about the person, and promoting personal creativity.

Original  Creative Process

Something we tend to forget is that the creativity is about being original, creating the new. The magic of producing something from nothing.  Or maybe even reshaping an old idea into something new from a different angle.

Newness and Uniqueness

The aspect of what is original is really relative to the individual.   You may consider an idea new to yourself, but your peers may consider it to be old and an estabilished concept.   Interestingly this relative creativity even has a series of terms associated with it.

Margaret Boden, categorised relative original creative ideas as:

• P-creativity (psychological creativity)  - new or novel ideas only from the mind of the individual concerned.
• H-creativity (historical creativity) – known to be new or novel to the whole of human history.

So if you produce an idea that is new to you, you are being p-creative.  However if the idea is new to society then it is h-creative or historically creative.

This does bring us to a question of what is unique and what is new.   Something can be new to generation, new to an individual, but its not an absolute. Historically it is not new.   Where as something being unique is the first of it’s kind, without parallel or comparison to anything else ever.

So maybe true creativity maybe expressed in uniqueness.

The issue is that in today’s world it is hard to be truly unique in ones creativity. We are often unconsciously referencing to our memories, experiences and influences all the time.  With the information age – the amount of information that we are exposed to is without doubt a magnitude larger than our predecessors even 20 years ago.

We no long have the benefit of living in the world of our predecessors; left to just receive a trickle  from the rest of the world of the changes, new information and influences around them.  In the past they had the luxury that they could create with a distinct reduction from  the taint of the world around them.

Produce or Create

Following on from this is the question can something artificial, like a computer, be creative.   What is it that makes anything creative.  Does some that is going to be creative need a state of consciousness to capture the unique ideas.

This could be debated here till the cows come home. So let’s not, eh.

Maybe its just the  lack of consciousness that is stopping the creative process with machines, provide consciousness and you have creativity.

Then again if we are borrowing from our previous experience and knowledge are we being really creative.  Maybe we are just being machine-like and producing a design, instead of creating a design.  Something to think on when you do your next UX project.

It could just be the use of the logical process verse the gut instinct to produce the  creative process.  Semantics, yes, but still very important.

Meaningful  Creative Process

Now creativity without a cause, without meaning, is often seen as pointless, soulless.

The meaning can be a personal thing, for the creator, or even a commercial motivation.  Still at the end of the process there has to be a reason, a goal, a meaning behind it all.

It is this meaning  that allows us to have a sense of achievement when we complete a creative process.

In a way, one only becomes creative if there is understanding and meaning of the creative product.   If the product has no understanding or meaning, then the creativity can’t be seen and understood by others.  It follows then to others it’s not creative, it’s just product of a process.

UX and Creativity

With all this talk on creativity and what it is  - are we really being all that creative in the User Experience process? Or are we just applying the outcome of the design (user) research, web strategy and general design principles to the user interface design.   Or are we stepping beyond this and making something new, unique and innovative?

Sometimes I question if we are being as creative as we could be, has business and commercial constraints weakened our grasp on creativity?

Remember:

To be creative an idea must be usable and actionable – Teresa Amabile

Still what is creativity to you?  Do you think it can be learned, studied and mastered; or is it something more innate?

I was talking to the local UPA Perth chapter (in formation) about aspects of UX visualisation.  It was an interesting topic that brought up a good number of discussion points.

One point was on the design process. The way we design.  The way that we just don’t allow ourselves time to fail at the design.  Or if we do, it is hidden in the back room so we can appear to be “magical design wizards” that produce the perfect product, interface design, IA or the like.

Great!  Nice idea if you want to really keep this air of the designer being someone “mysterious and magical”.   Someone that can just disappear for a few hours and suddenly they have the final product.

Stop the Myth

We really have to stop this process.

You know how no-one understands design.  They don’t value design. They just don’t get how long it takes to design something.  They just don’t get the process. They just don’t understand the principles of the design.

Well we are to blame!  We are the problem.   We have build the wall between ourselves and our clients.   We have build the prissy pedestal that we are standing on.

For to long we have been taking the design process and putting it behind closed doors where only a few audience members, team members and select client liaisons get to see behind the “Wizard of Oz” curtain from time to time.

We should go beyond just explaining the design process to the client, and flashing around a few final concepts when we need signoff.  We should  involve them. Even if it’s just in a small way. If we did this some of the issues we have would start to disappear.

Education is Important

It’s all about education. Educating the client’s decision makers, and even your team.

It’s about taking down the wall and showing your process.  Discussing and explaining with your client the design process as you step through it.  Not just showing the final stages of each process either, the steps along the way, warts and all.

Yes, that’s right,  show them the rough sketches, the wireframes that have failed, the concept storyboards and mockup concepts that you have rejected.   It’s simple, explain why these designs have failed and been rejected.   Involve the client in the process.

Become human, not a design mage or a mindless web design monkey.

You may say, “but the client doesn’t want to see all the design process” .

Are you really sure. Most people, I find, are even just a little bit  envious of us.  They would love to help out in the design process.  They want to be us.

Key is to just be patient with them, your clients are a design newbie, be understanding but firm, after all they are paying your because you are “the designer”.  It’s a balancing act, don’t pester them with details all the time. Still in your progress meetings, show the design output. Show the progression towards the final concept.

Stop Perfection, Make Mistakes

If you are looking at me strangely by now, then I can tell that you tend not to really design in the traditional way, with multiple iterations of a design leading to the final outcome.

Whether it be sketching with pencil and paper, in a wireframing application or just using Photoshop, you should be cycling through a series of design concepts before you decide on the final product.

Yes you could say that there is all this user research that we have and it’s all you need to build the design.   Well I agree, but I also disagree.

Granted you do have an outline a specification framework, restrictions on the design from the user research. Still there will often be hundreds of ways you can approach the issues and develop the design.

Even with applying the standard design principles on top of the user research findings, you should still have a good deal of approaches you can take.

If can only see one approach, maybe you need to take a fresh look at the problem, from a different view point.

Protosketch it

Like a good product design, there will be failures in a UX design.

However these failures are important. They give us ideas, they allow us to get frustrated, to look beyond the everyday and find that special design the client is really looking for.

Failure in designing allows you to iterate the design.  They allow us to discount designs and to get inspired with new alternatives  from the failures. Gradually over time, you will get less and less new concepts and start to discount more and more.  Resulting in the final concept.

It’s a simple process.  Just sketch out a concept, get others feedback, throw around some ideas.   It’s like you are prototyping the base concept sketch. Iterate it, adding and removing concepts.

Maybe  we should call it protosketching.

Involve the client, involve your peers, friends, team colleagues or maybe do a peer review.

Just work down that process of refinement to the final design.  Now I’m not talking an agile process here, I’m talking about something that happens the first moment you put pencil to paper in the sketching process be it analogue or digital.

Remember design is not a robotic process, it’s a creative process.

I often find my best designs are the ones I don’t think about, the ones I mull over for days looking for inspiration from things all around me.  Doing a little sketching, drawing, letting my mind wander.  In case you ask, I only work with clients that know they will get a good result if they don’t push the process, sure this helps as well.

Fail or Don’t Design

Now in my mind if you are not failing at your design, well you are not designing.   You are just processing an analysis, and producing one possible outcome.  Maybe you should stop and think.   Are you doing the right thing by your client.   Does your client really just want a second rate concept.

If you like producing second rate designs, do us all a favour, stop.  Just stop designing, the world has enough crap designs.

If you are failing.  Well that’s great, design and fail away.  God speed to you.

Rating:

4.5

As I’m designing forms I don’t usually have an issue making then usable or accessible within the limits of the clients budget.

However taking the form to the next level technically can sometimes be an issue. This is exactly what Fancy Form Design by Jina Bolton, Tim Connell and Derek Featherstone is all about, designing and building those great forms on the web.

When I first purchased this book (yes I do purchase my books, they aren’t usually review freebies) I was a little skeptical as to whether this book would have any content in it that would be relevant to me. This is an issue that I’m running into more and more these days.

I was surprised. I was expecting a dry developer focused book on form design. It is not. This is a good book, well worth the 4-5 hour read. I found that it wasn’t just one of those books you read once either, it’s also a great reference book.

This book is focused on the front end developer or back end developer that wants to enhance their forms. Even a UX designer like me with hands on skills will get something from this book.

While I was reading this book I was constantly thinking, well that’s great, but what about this accessibility or usability issue – yeah I can’t help it. But you know not a one or two paragraphs later I was presented with the solution or consideration for those issues. It’s great to see a practical book that is on same page as I am.

The Content

Interestingly the book layout parallels the way in which you design and develop an online form. The book itself walks you through a centralised case study for the development of a series of forms. Fancy Form Design is a book very heavy in code and visual examples as well, which makes it a very useful future reference tool.

The first section of the book deals with the planning phase of development, looking at the types of form elements, and the ways they are presently being  enhanced on the web. It also looks at the usual competitive analysis process. Moving on to my favourite part the interaction design of the form, now it doesn’t spend a lot of time in this area as there are some good books on the market already that handle this area in detail.  There is a bit of a discussion on task flows, paper prototyping and wireframing (which I personally think we can do without).

The form design section of the book walks through the usual suspects, of the grid, typography, the use of colour and micro imagery to enhance a form’s presentation. This section is about the graphical design only. It’s the next section that walks you through the building of the form.

You then get to the bones of the matter, the development of the form structure. There are a good series of examples here on how to build a form correctly to overcome most of the common accessibility and usability issues. Basic issues such as the correct practice for use of labels, error messages, required fields and help text are reviewed and discussed with clarity here.   This is an area you might think you know backwards, however it’s always worth a review on these matters.

Now we have the structure of the forms it’s time to use some CSS to style the final forms. Fancy Form Design walks you through the issues of using various resets and the various ways form elements render in different browsers (I’m looking at you IE) and ways to overcome them. I didn’t expect to find anything new in this section, and I didn’t, still your mileage may vary on this one.

The final chapter is on enhancing your forms beyond the stylised CSS/HTML layout with the help of jQuery.

This is the section I enjoyed the most in this book. It looked in detail at select menu, radio and checkbox styling as well as conditional question displays, date selectors, password strength indicators and a basic auto-complete. All this is presented in an easy to follow manner, which makes implementing these enhancements progressively on your forms, with jQuery, really easy. There is even a reminder about input validation, doing it on the client and server sides.

Only the downside, I personally think the last section of the form enhancement was a bit to short. I could have done with another 10-20 pages of additional enhancements to the case study in question. A little more detail on the  jQuery level would have been good too  (small birdie tells me watch for a Sitepoint jQuery Book very soon).

Finally – the last word

Overall it’s good book, entertaining, well written, not overly long, full of immediately practical examples that anyone familiar with form design and development can use.  It’s good to see more of these micro topic books being written than the large 500 page tomes of yesterday.

Side note: why have I been reviewing lots of Sitepoint books of late, well maybe it’s something to do with their range of books.

It’s one of those wet August days in Perth when the sunny and rain just can’t make up their mind who really wants to be the dominate partner.   In a similar way a web design business can wrestle with a similar issue.   Do you use someone else’s pre-built templates  or do you roll your own designs.

Between User Experience and Information Architecture gigs I usually squeeze in a little standard front end web site development.  Over the  years I have rolled my own, designing each website from scratch to the final interactive site.  I have prided myself in this production of  a higher quality result that my clients where looking for.   Something unique that they knew was a once off.

However in the last year or so I have been thinking, is that really what people want.  After all it’s just web design, its not like we are producing a fine arts masterpiece or the like.  It’s commercial throwaway pixels.   To this end I have been experimenting with using pre-built  templates for some of my clients.   Yes I admit it, I have strayed.   Now the interesting thing is there are a number of benefits and pitfalls with using these templates:

Benefits

1. It’s About Profit.

   From a pure business view you really are there to maximise profit.   It’s a cold hard fact that no one in the industry will talk about.   As a creative you are too often concerned with the technical aspect of the design, from the user experience to the beauty of the final  product. From a project management view, it’s about minimum hours for maximum profit.   If you can turn around a design for a client in a few hours and charge out for 5 times that amount, then that is a good thing.  Using pre-built templates allows you to do this very easily.

2. Platform is not at Issue

   These days the professional pre-built templates  often come in a variety  of different platforms from WordPress, Joolma, Drupal, various e commerce systems and even basic HTML layouts.   So there really is no excuse to be restricted by the template and the platform.

3. A Refreshing Change

   Having someone else outside of your usual creatives design a site allows for a fresh approach to a design view point, this can often win a client over with an alternative design outside your usual stable of concepts.

4. Save Time

   Just like you are saving money on using a professional template, you are also saving time to a degree (see below for clarification), as you at least have a prepackaged starting point.  You can also often present to the client a range of design concept proofs very quickly.

5. New View, New techniques

   You are not just getting a new design, you are being exposed to other people’s techniques in terms of CSS and HTML.  Good or bad, it’s a different view point.   Sometime we just need that as we can all get very stale with our own code or that of the other freelancers we tend to work with.

Disadvantages

1. Don’t Assume it’s Good

   The templates may look very stylish from the outside, design wise.  However I have found that they are often either the bare minimum of code to express the design or a mish-mash of tag soup.  There seems at best to be a distinct lack of professional code.  Maybe I’m just being to hard on my fellow web professionals, but the terms like web standards, the best practice seem to a very loose and fast application in the world of professional template production.

2. Completeness is a Dirty Word

   A well designed template will have been tested against a suite of data types and scenarios that will allow for a large degree of flexibility while still maintaining the interface look and feel.   That’s what you would expect.  Be prepared to get something that is a more of half arsed attempt at this.   Again it’s going to mean that you have to drop into the code and fix the lack of the completeness.

3. Burning Time for Perfection

   I am a perfectionist, I’ll give no quarter on that front, small details in a design tend to  drive me crazy.   I have a habit of correcting bad code or imperfect designs.  In a good way using a template does force you to stop fussing over minor points of the design.   However  in some cases you really need to change the methods used in the code so that it fits into your workflow and makes it easier to maintain in the future.  This is going to cost, sometimes beyond the savings that can be made using templates.   In reality it comes down to the longevity of the client and what future modifications they may require,

4. Bad Techniques

   Don’t expect  all the techniques in use to be good or well thought out before they where implemented.   This is especially true for CSS.  I have often found that the hacks to implement the intended design  (especially  for Internet Explorer) can be an little dubious at best.  Overall the techniques just seem to lack the experience of a good web designer.  I guess in a way I’m projecting my own skills.   Still it’s just little things like  a good CSS layout structures, correct use if inheritance, and naming techniques that really do show how much experience author has.

5. Cost Effective,  Maybe

   It’s just amazing how you are working on a very strict budget with a template design and suddenly the client wants something simple like a colour change  that suddenly means  a template rework.   This is where if it was your design it would be more cost effective to make the change in design direction.  However with a template, that is not the case, you are often working with photoshop files that have had masking and effects layers rendered, so simple things like a slight colour change can suddenly go from a few minutes work to an hour or so of working the design.

After all this what’s the main things I’ve take away from all this are –  In an industry where the business dollar talks, and with the latest software you can turn around a photoshop design into an interactive web site in about 20-30 minutes by using table layouts.   Is there still a place for  unique designs that are hand coded.   I frankly would  sadly say for the average client, no.   The ways of the craftsman are disappearing just as hand made furniture and cars have done in the past.

Maybe it’s time to go design some templates.